reevaluating 600hps grow - need advice please

I have been growing 8 plants in a short, triagular closet with a 600 watt hps. The end product has always been great, but the yields are pathetic compared to what I have seen here and far short of what I should be getting (1/2 gram per watt). I would like to increase yields and someone in another forum suggested doing fewer plants and maybe LST or scrog. I am for that, but would I really expect more out of fewer plants?

As I posted in the grow room forum, I also just bought a 6" 450CFM fan and filter - specifically for the plants, not for heat (never been a problem). I will be doing a passive intake type thing and there is a window 30" from where the intake holes will be so I am hoping to pull lots of fresh air into the room. Should I expect any increase in yield just from adding the fan and fresh air? I have never had anything other than a small oscillating fan in my closet before.

attached is my setup and a photo of one of my previous grows. Thanks!

longer veg imo would solve your yield problems. Those plants look tiny for how much soil is in those buckets... if you want to have 1 foot plants, use 1 gallon containers. Maybe switching to two gallon pots and having more would help too imho

rocknratm said:

longer veg imo would solve your yield problems. Those plants look tiny for how much soil is in those buckets... if you want to have 1 foot plants, use 1 gallon containers. Maybe switching to two gallon pots and having more would help too imho

Click to expand...

I agree... those plant are pretty tiny for being under a 600 watt light in 5 gallon buckets. with plants that size you can't expect a high yield per plant even with the best conditions, its just not possible. I would say if you want to keep your plants small, use smaller containers and grow a lot more plants, you could easily do a Sea of Green grow with 10-15 one to two foot plants and get much higher yields....but I always say less is more and if it were me I would just grow fewer plants and veg longer. And if height is an issue you could try LST or scrogging and only grow 3 or 4 plants to fill the area under the light....hope that helps and good growing!

-PEACE-

yep, throw away the 5 gallon buckets. i did! more plants, 2 or 3 gallon grow bags, tie them down, crowd them in and you'll bump that .5 per gram goal up to .7 in no time.

thanks for the advice. They are acutally 5 gallon buckets cut down to about 3. I usually veg for 5-7 weeks. I have never gotten .5 grams per watt. I suck. During my last grow, the plants auto-sexed so I switched them.

here is my plan now":
I will go with 5-6 plants and let them veg for 8 weeks or so.

Should I expect anything from the new fan? It was almost $200.

rbico said:

thanks for the advice. They are acutally 5 gallon buckets cut down to about 3. I usually veg for 5-7 weeks. I have never gotten .5 grams per watt. I suck. During my last grow, the plants auto-sexed so I switched them.

here is my plan now":
I will go with 5-6 plants and let them veg for 8 weeks or so.

Should I expect anything from the new fan? It was almost $200.

Click to expand...

Sounds food.... yes 450 cfm will move alot of air, but if its not going through the filter and out of the room, it wont make a difference for fresh air, which helps grows alot.

Your plan sounds good, id do 2 or 3 gallon pots, depending what you can fit. A foot a gallon is standard, so if they are two feet in three gallons flower them at that point, and they will prob stretch that last foot. But bushyness is a factor as well

def longer veg time. lst supercrop and jus bush them out to fill all the area under the light. better soil. some nutes. and bam.... if everything is right all around the last thing it would come down to is genetics. how big is that space. my 600 is over a 4x4 room. that space looks a little small.... utilize the full footprint of the 600

you do have interesting results here
i would have guessed you were doing LST with the plant heights
the plants do look good in a miniature kind of way
i'm amazed you could get plants to grow/flower at this height, looks like Sea Of Green

what is that thing you got set up around your plants? i had a buddy who used to grow that used something like that. he got shut down because of some drama to be safe and he didnt remember where he even got it. i've never seen them. i got a 600w hps and i grow lots of tiny plants and yield an average of 15-20 grams from each plant, i have no leafy whipsy popcorn bud and i can fit 9-12 plants in a container...and about 4 containers under my 600w. i grow mother plants under flourescents and clone in bubble cloners then transplant to solo cups then to 3/4- 1 gal size square pots or grow bags. generally i dont have much if any veg time. (less than a week) and it works out good man. with your set-up id look to do a perpetual SOG rather than 1 giant SCROG although i get great results from a SCROG as well

I am already setup with 8 buckets of nice soil. What I think I will do is pull 2 buckets out so I have 6 plants and let them veg for two months or so - training them like crazy with LST method. Then go to 12/12 and see what my final results are. I may keep 2 smaller 1-galon bags just to see what I get.

Thanks for all of the replies - this is a lot of input and I really appreciate it. I will try to respond to all in order:
rocknratm

The fan will be exhausting outside of the closet into a larger room, at the same time pulling fresh air via passive intake. I will flower at 2' even though they will probably have to LST or supercropped. 3' tall would be too tall for my short grow closet.
I read your peperjack scrog thread and it was amazing! In one of the final posts you said you got 4ounces of bud and another 2.5 popcorn sized buds. So 6.5 ounces. was that dry? And all from that one plant?

growone
It's deceiving. The plants were bent this way and that, supercropped some and pulled every which way. So they look really short, but it is becuase they are bent all over. The nugs were dense, but just not enough.


onewize1
I thought I was utilizing the footprint of the light pretty well, but that I was doing something else wrong (not enough veg time and no ventilation). The space is small vertically (5'), but 8'wide and 10' long (angled ceiling). I have to work with what I have. I have done scrog in the past and supercropping, but the LST thing seem like it might be the best balance of both.

Jesushasdreads
The thing I have around the pool is an polished aluminum sheet. It was a left over from a graphics display I made. It is called "bright aluminum" and is about $100 for a 4'x10 sheet. This can be bought from most sign supply warehouses in most larger cities. you setup with many small plants sounds nice. Any pics? I looked through your threads but didn't see any. So many options. I cannot really do a mother plant. my only option would be to buy 10-15 clones from a dispensary and then just give them a couple weeks after transplanting into 1-2 gallon bags then go straight to 12/12.

FYI: I am growing heavy duty fruity. seeds from some earlier grows. this stuff is very good.

what about some 2-cola grows to save room? Anyone have luck with these in a short space? I did these years ago with shiskaberry and had decent luck. see attached

super cropping - haven't tried it myself, but this looks like it was done reasonably well
i know 1/2g is not the best, but it's a long ways from the worst
we get to reading these 'i got 1.5g per watt threads' and think that's the norm
i've seen a lot of hps grows that did 1/2g - i'd say gradual improvement may not be a bad goal

rbico

i dont have any bud pix since i switched to the SOG method....i got some pix from like my very first grow years ago, the most recent pix i have is from my new grow i was setting up, but that turned bad, and i had to tear it all down. it is set back up, and i am vegging out 6 plants that i salvaged from the shut down, those will be cloned and put into the flower Room ASAP. i cant update in a grow journal right now because my car was broke into and among the things stole was my digi camera. check out my thread on the set up of my grow room. the current set up is in the same room using the same processes with a few improvements. you get an idea of how big my plant are when i flower ect...but all these pix are of vegging plants, unfortunately none of the 100+ plants i had going got to flower because i had to shut down my grow. read all about it in my thread

600W HPS Grow Room Set Up
https://www.rollitup.org/grow-room-design-setup/440350-new-grow-room-600w-hps.html

thanks. I never get 1/2 per watt from this setup. I think I may have in my old rental house, but that was a better growing environment. I am probably at about 1/4 gram per watt. pathetic.

I sew your setup and it looked good. too bad your landlords came sniffing around. good luck to you on this one!